Axes in the uk

The Pleasure Dome:
Currently a blank canvas (apart from a couple of new pegs) .......



Matt on White Goods (aka Doorstep Challange)



Ramon on Jaz



Taking care not to blow the top section of Jaz



Dave getting back in to the swing of things



uncharted territory

The Balloon Bed

Back at the best drytooling venue this side of Edinburgh (or possibly the Channel?)



Ramon reaching one of the all natural holds; a deep pocket that requires a fig4 move to reach the next hold (unless you know otherwise??)



Ollie in training for the OMM!!



Me in training to become a clown. That thing that I'm holding (not the Radon filled balloon) is a rather good lightweight bed!!! When it was first described to me; 2 layers of silk with pockets for modelling ballons, I was thinking it sounded a bit mad, and it is. But if you want a superlighweight bed for use away from sharp things!........



The start of a great sequence of moves. thanks for the photo Andy.

An Alpine start

Piz Badile. Our target route (the Cassin) went up the NE face (left of ridge in photo) but as it is meant to be a rock route in summer so this amount of snow put us off a bit.



A short drive south to Mello in Italy got us within reach of some fantastic cappuchino's and some interesting slabs. The grades used seem to blur the division between French and English. (E4 fr.6a anyone??)



These wolves in sheep clothing hunt round the campsite (and the bottom of the slabs looking for injured climbers). Luckily the only prey they caught was the German's food basket; did you know a donky will happily eat tea bags and butter straight out of the tub!!?

Cleaning another new line at The Goods

It looked like there was a good stein pull below this block!!!!!!

?

A Great Escape

There I was trying to put a team together to make a visit to White Goods and I contacted Martin Poznanski, who has been known to crank out some chalk routes, only to find that he and his girlfriend are taking a 6 month trip biking round Asia.

NEW.......Follow their adventures HERE
And be sure to follow the Picasa link on their blog to see their photos

Wrong choice if you ask me; drytooling in Wales or this .....

"We're planning to leave on May 1 and return some time in October. Starting point will be Poland and from there we're planning to go to: Slovakia - Hungaria - Romania - Ukraine - Russia - Kazachstan - Uzbekistan - Tadjikistan - Kyrgyzstan - Kazachstan - Russia - Mongolia - Russia - Estonia - Latvia - Lithunia - Poland - Germany. Looks like a nice little round trip on the world map - about 25.000km :)

From what I have heard so far the roads in Kazachstan, the other Stans and Mongolia are rather dirt tracks than roads. So it'll be an interesting experiment with Martin not having ridden a motorbike for the last ten years and me having no offroad experience."

I have seen a tiny bit of Azerbaijan (Baku) and wouldn't drive there in anything smaller than a tank!! So I think all of that axe climbing will be good training for hanging on to those handlebars. Have fun.

search my blog for Martin or Baku if you want.

distant memories

A huge thanks to Jo Dotremont for these photos, check his BLOG to see his adventures.



Later on in the Musashi effort I was working moves along a crack that could have done with a bit of ice in it.



This was about were i got to on my best effort. If only the ice was long enough to get a foot hold......

EXCUSES

Kristoffer Szilas does it again

Here are a few photos of Kristoffer Szilas's latest expedition.

Check out his site HERE.